How to Label Furniture Parts for Assembly

A kitchen base cabinet with three drawers, made from the template with its default sizes (600 × 720 × 560 mm, 18 mm board) and drawer boxes switched on, comes to seven rows in the Parts table and 21 pieces. Six of those pieces are Drawer side at 500 × 198 mm and six are Drawer front / back at 502 × 198 mm, which differ by 2 mm. Pile them up after cutting and you will measure each one twice at assembly, because nobody can tell them apart by eye. The fix is cheap and has to happen at the saw: put the part number on every piece the moment it comes off. This guide shows how, and how far a label can go once the job has a model.

A furniture part label is a sticker on a cut piece that carries its number from the cut list, its size and the marks that tell the next person at the bench what the piece is, where it goes and what is still to be done to it.

What should a label on a furniture part say?

The part number first, then the name and the size. After that, only what saves a question at the bench. The number lets you match the piece to the printed cut list, the cutting drawings and the work pages. The name and the size back it up. Everything else is about the state of the piece or its place.

On the panel labels CutOptim prints by default the piece name (up to two lines), the dimensions, the copy of the part (2/3 means the second of three identical pieces), and the sheet the piece is cut from, for example Sheet #3 — Birch 18. In 2D it adds the grain arrows when the job is cut with grain, and for banded pieces an outline with every banded edge drawn thick. The project name prints too when the job is saved as a project, and the material in material-specific mode, so a cut-out piece still says which job it belongs to.

The Workshop marking section adds four more things, all off by default so a label you printed before looks exactly the same: the part number as the largest text, the work-stage circles, the FE mark on factory edges, and the hidden-side mark. A job with a furniture model adds three lines of its own, covered below.

How do part numbers and place letters work?

The number of a part is the number of its row in the Parts table at the moment of the run. Parts with the same name share the number of the first such row. The same number appears in the cut list, on the cutting drawings, on the work pages of the PDF and, with the option on, in the top left corner of the label as the largest text, so you can match a piece to your printed list from across the shop.

Take the three-drawer base cabinet. Its seven rows are Top rail, Bottom, Side, Drawer front, Drawer side, Drawer front / back and Plinth. Say the Drawer side row is number 5 and the Drawer front / back row number 6. All six sides carry a 5 and all six fronts and backs a 6, with the copy shown as 1/6, 2/6 and so on, so the 2 mm difference stops mattering: you pick up the 6 and know which piece it is.

When the job has a furniture model, from a template or an imported SketchUp file, identical parts also get a place letter. A bookshelf from the template has four rows in its Parts table: Top is 1, Bottom is 2, Side is 3 and Shelf is 4. The two sides become 3a and 3b and the four shelves 4a to 4d. The letter appears only where several parts share a number, so the top is a plain 1. Letters run group by group, bottom to top and then left to right, the same on the label, in the Assembly view and in the Build Pack, so 3b is the same piece everywhere. The letters join the number on the label when the part number option is on.

Two consequences follow. A number is tied to the table, so if you re-order the rows and run again, the numbers follow the new order; print the labels and the cut list from the same run. And two rows with the same name in the table are one part as far as the number goes, so give different parts different names. Part numbers work in 2D, 1D Linear and Wood. In 2D, a piece of a grain-matched set also carries its set position, which is covered in the guide on grain matching for doors and drawer fronts.

How does a label say where a part goes and what to drill?

With a model behind the job, the label gets up to three additions. The first is the structure line, which prints whenever the model exists: the group and the position among the same part in that group. On the bookshelf the left side reads Carcass · left, the right side Carcass · right, and the second shelf from the bottom reads Shelves · 2 of 4 from the bottom. The back panel reads Back panel. The words are the app language’s, so a Hungarian label says Korpusz · bal.

The second is the visible edge: a small triangle on the little picture of the piece marks the edge that will be seen, such as the front edge of a shelf. The third appears when you have marked holes in the model: a Drilling line, for example Drilling: 8 this side on a bookshelf side that carries three pocket holes and a row of five shelf-pin holes, and Drilling: 2 this side on a shelf. The shapes are drawn on the small picture of the piece, filled for the face the label is stuck on and open for the other face. The label is stuck on the hidden face, so this side means the hidden face and other side means the one you see.

The marks come from the model, not from a rule: you place a pocket hole, a 35 mm hinge cup, a 32 mm shelf-pin row, runner screws, a free hole or a groove in the Assembly view, and the label, the drawing and the hole sheet of the Build Pack all read the same marks. The exploded view guide shows how.

How do you print the labels in the order the pieces come off the saw?

Switch on Print in cutting order (sheet by sheet). The labels then come out sheet by sheet, in the order of the sawing plan in 2D and bar by bar in 1D and Wood, instead of the order of the Parts table. You stand at the saw with a stack of stickers in the same order as the cuts, and you tag each piece as it comes off.

This matters more than it sounds. A sheet with 20 pieces produces 20 pieces in a pile; matching them to a list afterwards is the slow part. With the labels in sawing order, the first label is the first piece, and the sheet line, for example Sheet #3 — Birch 18, tells the sorter which stack each sticker belongs to.

For a roll or a stack of stickers, choose Label printer (one label per page) in the same panel and enter the label size, or pick one of the ready-made stocks, APLI 03056 for an A4 sheet of 24 labels or Brother DK-11201 for a roll. If your printer shifts the print a little, the Printer offset moves everything by up to 20 mm.

What do the work-stage circles, the FE mark and the hidden-side mark do?

They record the state of the piece, so nobody has to remember it. Each is a small mark on the label that you tick or read with a pen in hand.

The work-stage circles are a row of small circles along the bottom of the label, each with a short word: Rough cut, Cut to size, Edge banded and Sanded, written as the abbreviations of the app language, which in English are RC, C2S, EB and S. Tick a circle when the piece reaches that stage. The edge-banded circle appears only on pieces that have edge banding. You can type your own word for any stage, up to 6 characters, and add stages of your own separated by commas, up to 6 stages in all.

The FE mark, in 2D only, marks the factory edges. An edge of the piece that lies on a sheet edge where no trim is cut off is the board’s finished factory edge, and it is marked FE on the piece’s outline. It shows which edges came straight from the board and which were cut by your saw. A piece cut from an off-cut gets no FE, because its edges are not factory edges.

The hidden-side mark is a small filled triangle and the words hidden side at the bottom of the label: stick this label on the side that will not show. It keeps the sticker off the face the customer sees.

What does the QR code on a label do?

It turns the label into a tick box on your phone. With the QR option on in the Label format panel, every placed piece gets a small code, and scanning it opens that piece’s page: the part number and name, its size, the sheet or bar it is cut from, which copy it is, and big buttons for each work stage printed on the label, plus Cut in 2D. One tap saves one tick, and a second phone shows it within a quarter of a minute, so the person at the saw and the person at the bench see the same state.

The page needs you to be signed in, and only you and the people in your team can open it; anyone else gets the same answer as for a code that does not exist. The code appears only when the cut is saved to your account, the open plan is the saved one and you have a plan with cloud saving, Pro or Workshop. If any of those is missing, the labels print without the code and a message says why. If you optimize the cut again and save it, the old labels’ pages turn read-only with a note to print new labels, so a stale sticker cannot tick the wrong piece.

The ticks sit next to the progress you already track on the cutting plan: marking a piece Cut on the phone is the same record as tapping it in the app, and the old sheet-level progress is unchanged.

How do you switch it all on and keep it?

1. Run the optimization

   Labels follow the current plan, so run the optimizer first. Then open Export and choose Labels. Panel labels are available on every signed-in plan, Free included.

2. Open the Label format panel

   In the label preview, click the gear button in the preview header. The Label format panel opens with the format, the size and the Workshop marking section.

3. Pick the stock and the Workshop tracking preset

   Choose A4 sheet (3 columns), Label printer, APLI 03056 or Brother DK-11201. Then pick the Workshop tracking preset in the Preset list. It switches on the part number, the cutting order, the four work stages, the factory edges and the hidden-side mark and changes nothing else, not the format and not the size.

4. Adjust the stage words

   Type your own word for any stage, up to 6 characters, or add stages of your own separated by commas. Leave a field empty and the language default is used.

5. Switch on the QR code if you want phone ticking

   Save the cut to your account, then tick the option for a QR code to the part’s page in the same panel. It is saved with the label settings and follows your account.

6. Print at actual size and tick as you go

   In the print dialog choose the same paper size and print at 100% (actual size), not fit to page. Stick each label on its piece and tick the circles with a pen, or on the phone, as the piece moves on.

A preset is only a shortcut: the choices stay the ones you see in the panel, and the list shows modified next to the active preset once you change a choice. Save as preset stores your current choices under a name you type; you can keep up to 20 of your own, and update, rename and delete them. When you are signed in, your choices and your presets are saved to your account, so they are the same on every computer. The Engine API takes the same choices as options.labels on a 2D request and draws its label PDF with them, and it can print a QR code per part.

To reprint one label after sanding, type the numbers into Only these part numbers in the Label format panel, for example 3, 14, 25. Only those pieces’ labels are printed. An empty field prints every piece, and if none of the numbers exists in the plan, nothing is printed and a message says so. This filter stays on the device where you set it and is never saved to your account. You do not reprint the sheet; you reprint three stickers.

Common mistakes and limits

• Printing labels from one run and the cut list from another. The numbers follow the order of the Parts table at the moment of the run. Print both from the same plan.
• Giving different parts the same name. Parts with the same name share one number. Name a drawer side and a drawer front / back differently.
• Scaling the print to fit the page. A label printed at 90% no longer matches its stock. Print at 100% (actual size).
• Sticking the label on the visible face. That is what the hidden-side mark is for: it tells you which side the sticker belongs on.
• Trusting FE on an off-cut piece. A piece from an off-cut gets no FE mark, on purpose. Its edges are not factory edges.
• Importing the model again after labels are on the pieces. The numbers follow the table, so a second import can renumber. Reprint the labels from the new run.
• Expecting a position without a model. A job made from a plain cut list has no model, so the label says which part it is, how big and what was done to it, not where it goes. The one exception is a grain-matched set of fronts, which carries its set position.